EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Border officers at the San Ysidro Port of Entry purposely allowed a Dodge Avenger loaded with drugs to proceed to San Diego on Tuesday.
The silver Avenger driver by a Mexican woman with a B1/B2 visitor’s visa pulled up to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection booth at the crossing shortly before noon. She told an officer she was going shopping at the popular Las Americas Premium Outlets 20 minutes south of Downtown San Diego.
With tens of thousands of passenger vehicles crossing the border at San Ysidro every day, the CBP officer may have waved the sports car through. But court records show the officer had received an alert from a partner with a drug-sniffing dog roving through the lines of vehicles that the Avenger might be carrying drugs.
The woman identified as Maria Luisa Huato Jimenez was directed to a secondary inspection area where her vehicle went through an X-ray portal that revealed what appeared to be hidden packages behind both rocker panels, court records show.
It was then that CBP officers and Homeland Security Investigations agents decided to engage in a practice known in law enforcement as a “cold convoy.” It consists of allowing contraband to proceed under surveillance to apprehend or gather intelligence on co-conspirators.
Border officers didn’t tell Huato they had found anomalies and let her leave the port of entry.
Law enforcement officers tracked her to the outlet mall and as she parked and walked inside. Shortly after, they saw a man walk up to the vehicle, get in and drive away.
Court records show the man later identified as Rodrigo Gomez Morales drove to an address on Saint Andrews Avenue in San Diego and began to remove the packages hidden in the Avenger.
HSI agents arrested Gomez and gave their partners at the mall green light to apprehend Huato. Records show the packages held 18.3 kilos of fentanyl powder and 8.7 kilos of meth.
In interviews following their arrests, Gomez and Huato told investigators they had been ordered under duress to engage in the transport of contraband.
Gomez said his family would be harmed if he did not retrieve the narcotics from the Avenger; Huato said her brother is involved in criminal activity and would be harmed if she did not cooperate, according to a complaint affidavit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
The court documents don’t disclose who orchestrated the drug smuggling or which criminal group would harm the suspects’ relatives.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office charged Huato with importation of a controlled substance and Gomez with distribution of a controlled substance. Both made their initial appearance in a federal courtroom in San Diego on Wednesday.
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